Chapter 58 – The Shattered Veins (Part 1)

The initial strike had been a miracle, but miracles never endure.

Yusuf's wound that had fallen into the Tree of Memory pulsed like an open vein, pouring out light that did not illuminate but charred everything it touched. The Hollowing Sky shook above, its once limitless black mottled over with veins of white, broken as lightning. Each pulse shook the ground, dropping Yusuf to his knees. His chest burned from air he didn't inhale. His hands continued to tremble where they had gripped the Codex like a blade.

For a single bare second, he thought it would be done—that his strike had been enough. That the split down the trunk would grow, shatter, and topple this horror of roots and memory.

But the Tree was not going to die.

It was waking up.

The rift hissed, spread, then shut as if the course of time had been turned back. From the wound emerged not rot but a burst of veins, sleek and glowing, spreading over the bark to stitch it whole again. Then the earth groaned, splitting into fissures that stretched out across it like webs spun by spiders. The veins plunged into the ground, burrowing deep, and the world rocked back.

Yusuf reeled backward. His boots slid upon stone that was not stone but living flesh, throbbing, filled with shining rivers. He could feel them beat underfoot, an irregular heartbeat resonating against his bones.

The Hollowing Sky curved inward, sagging like something heavy hung from strings of unseen rope. Its stars cried out, droplets falling into streams that rained down the horizon. Wherever the droplets touched, whole parts of country blinked out of existence—first a silver forest of pale oak trees, then a white marble city suspended in light, then fields of golden grain that stretched as far as the eye could see. All gone, vanished in an instant.

The world was unraveling.

"No—no, no, no…" Yusuf breathed gently, cupping his hand over his face as if steadying himself against what he was seeing. His other hand clutched the Codex in a grip so tight the knuckles of the hand cracked. "Stay with me. Stay—"

The earth heaved beneath him. A tear rent asunder, ejecting rivers of memory like molten glass. Pictures flooded upward, twisting, blazing: a mother stroking her child's hair at bedtime; soldiers raising a flag on a battlefield mired in mud; a musician's hand quivering over the strings of a broken lute. Every picture screamed as it tore free of its fiber and burned in the light.

Yusuf tried to run, but the cracks multiplied. The veins chased him, bursting out of the ground in helices, curling like snakes. One cracked across his path, near enough its heat seared the side of his head. Another wrapped around his ankle, yanking him off the ground.

He shrieked, thrusting the Codex into the root. The sword sang—a resonant, sonorous crack that cut through the din of unmaking time. The vein retracted, withering to ash, but three others burst upwards to replace it.

This was not a fight with roots. This was the Tree itself fighting back, reshaping the world its battlefield.

The air ripped with the sound of tearing cloth. He looked up.

The Hollowing Sky seeped in. Whole constellations drained out like water from a drain, their light being forced into the Tree. With every dying star, a new vein burst along its trunk, spreading outward, radiating and dripping. It was feeding, reclaiming, building towards something Yusuf could not yet define.

He sprinted, but every pace was treason. The ground trembled, and still more cracks appeared. His boots splashed in rivers of remembrance that seethed like fire, each drop shouting out against his skin. He dared not look, but every wave showed him another life crumbling to dust.

A merchant watching his stand burn. A woman whispering her lover's name as a sword cut into her breast. A coronation of a land consumed by shadow.

All of it coursing through him, like begging him to carry them when he had no strength left.

Stumbled. Fell. The Codex slipped from his fingers, and terror made him sit up. Without it, he was nothing—merely a ghost waiting to perish.

"Get up," he snarled at himself. "Get up, Yusuf. Don't stop now. Don't…"

The veins left him no option. They burst, inflating in a cage of glowing coils around him. They pulsated, constricting, each beat siphoning heat from the air.

Yusuf swung the Codex, its light-honed blade severing one coil in half. Another grew back. He spun, sliced, parried, but the cage closed in. Each strike juddered through his arms, his bones ringing. His gasps grew shorter, thinner.

A vein crept beneath his defenses, curving around his chest.

It tightened.

Pain spread out, aching and smothering, like being pressed flat by the sea. He gasped, the Codex shaking in his hand as his legs gave way. The vein tightened again. His vision began to fade, stars spinning across his eyes.

In the fog, he heard something.

Not a roar. Not the crashing of rock or the tearing of sky.

A heartbeat.

But not his own.

It was massive, drumming, booming across the sky. The Tree's pulse, now in perfect harmony with the Hollowing Sky's bursting arteries. Each beat drew another shred of world into its form.

He felt it trying to synchronize with him as well, to have his heartbeat keep the same rhythm as its own. His heart flinched, faltered. His breath halted.

No—" He pounded the Codex into the constricting vein. Light shattered, shattering the coil. He knelt, spitting blood, clutching the sword as if it were his last grasp on life.

The veins snapped back, but only for an instant. They wove, taking on new shapes—something bird-like, something shark-like. A cage turning into a predator.

The Hollowing Sky bent lower, its last stars collapsing. The darkness pressed down, suffocating, ready to crush him into the same silence that had claimed the worlds already erased.

Yusuf staggered to his feet. His body was failing, but his grip on the Codex was iron.

“You want to hollow me out?” he whispered hoarsely, blood dripping from his lips. “You’ll have to finish the job.”

The veins struck again.

And the world cried out when the battle started its second phase.